Pragmatism, if it is deemed a positive word, then every politician will say this is a ‘pragmatic’ policy. The converse is true. After a while, what does Pragmatism really mean becomes lost . . . Unfortunately, we could prob- ably substitute Pragmatism with fads like ‘liberal’, ‘sustainability’, and this truism probably still rings true.
The meaning of a word is socially constructed, however objective the research or researcher claims to be. Is social construction or culturally subjective necessarily inferior in the face of the purported high altar of Enlightenment objectivity? Certainly, no. I would venture to posit that this subjectivity and cultural diversity are precisely what makes us humans and the inquiry of human affairs interesting and ever dynamic. Every culture may have a different perspective on a particular word or concept and may in fact operationalise it in different ways. Merely examining cultural perspec- tives of any concept constitutes a worthy Lakatosian research programme.
This book is a start of a Pragmatism Lakatosian research programme which I am committing my entire professional life to discover and grow as both a practitioner (running a trisector consultancy consortium: Solaris Strategies Singapore serving governments, corporates and underserved non-profits) and academic (adjunct faculty specialising in strategy- innovation problem-solving practicums and series editor for Routledge- Solaris series on strategy, wisdom and skills). Pragmatism intrigues me because it relates to problem solving/practical reason (Aristotelian phro- nesis) in a sea of theories (Aristotelian episteme/universal truth) where every theory seems correct, to an extent but none are wiser. However, when I dive deeper, there is the philosophical pragmatism (which started as a distinctive New World America’s school of thought versus Old Europe/Continental philosophy, but unfortunately lost shine to the bulk of 20th century until Richard Rorty sought to revive it), political, policy pragmatism variants; Chinese used pragmatism as almost a way of life.